1. Field
The present disclosure relates generally to communication systems, and more particularly, to a signaling procedure facilitating a user equipment (UE) to discover and associate with multiple connection points (CPs) in a millimeter wave (mmW) communication system using beamforming
2. Background
Wireless communication systems are widely deployed to provide various telecommunication services such as telephony, video, data, messaging, and broadcasts. Typical wireless communication systems may employ multiple-access technologies capable of supporting communication with multiple users by sharing available system resources (e.g., bandwidth, transmit power). Examples of such multiple-access technologies include code division multiple access (CDMA) systems, time division multiple access (TDMA) systems, frequency division multiple access (FDMA) systems, orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) systems, single-carrier frequency division multiple access (SC-FDMA) systems, and time division synchronous code division multiple access (TD-SCDMA) systems.
These multiple access technologies have been adopted in various telecommunication standards to provide a common protocol that enables different wireless devices to communicate on a municipal, national, regional, and even global level. An example of an emerging telecommunication standard is Long Term Evolution (LTE). LTE is a set of enhancements to the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) mobile standard promulgated by Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). LTE is designed to better support mobile broadband Internet access by improving spectral efficiency, lowering costs, improving services, making use of new spectrum, and better integrating with other open standards using OFDMA on the downlink (DL), SC-FDMA on the uplink (UL), and multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna technology. However, as the demand for mobile broadband access continues to increase, there exists a need for further improvements in LTE technology. Preferably, these improvements should be applicable to other multi-access technologies and the telecommunication standards that employ these technologies.
Millimeter wave (mmW) systems functioning at higher carrier frequencies may occupy a bandwidth much larger than what is possible in most commercial microwave systems, e.g., cellular systems. However, a mmW system operating at the higher carrier frequencies must deal with the existence of increased pathloss before data communication can occur. The increased pathloss may be overcome by leveraging multiple antennas or antenna arrays to send a beamformed signal and yield a beamforming array gain. However, beamforming may limit a coverage area of a phased antenna array, thus making the communication of discovery signals with neighboring connection points (CPs) more difficult compared with communicating signals in an omni-directional manner. Accordingly, what is needed is a signaling protocol that overcomes the phased antenna array coverage area limitations caused by beamforming.